Very well played by New York. Their future has gotten alot brighter in the past week.

I'm starting to believe the Rangers won't have a Cole Hamels type splash this time.

Evidently the Sox won't let go of Sale unless the Rangers include Mazara and I just can't see that happening. They think they have a star for the next 10 to 15 years in that kid.

Still think Daniels makes a move for relief pitching but will probably rely on his scouts to bring in a relatively(in this market) cheap option in an attempt to provide a Dyson and Diekman return like they got last year.

Martin Perez has began to look like his potential suggested 2 years ago(2.77 ERA in his past 2 games and a much improved changeup, his bread and butter pitch).

You are set with 2 aces in Hamels/Darvish. Pray Perez can continue to rebound. Griffin looked solid in his last outing. Either Colby or Derek Holland can recover by August and that's your rotation. Pretty damn salty at the top but A TON of questions from the middle to back end.

Dyson looks like he is being held together by duct tape at this point and who knows what Bush can provide? They need to get SOMETHING.

I think the plan is to replace Prince with Gallo next year at the First Base/DH slot. Profar has begun to get more outfield work so he replaces Ian Desmond who will likely cash in big time this off season.

I get where they are coming from on keeping Mazara, but, remember, a couple years ago they looked to be building a dynasty and it all went to shit.

They should get Sale. They have a team that can win NOW, and should go for it.

I love keeping position player prospects, but they have enough young talent and Sale is a top 5 pitcher in the game.

I get where they are coming from on keeping Mazara, but, remember, a couple years ago they looked to be building a dynasty and it all went to shit.

They should get Sale. They have a team that can win NOW, and should go for it.

I love keeping position player prospects, but they have enough young talent and Sale is a top 5 pitcher in the game.

I agree.

Hate to trade Mazara...I think that kid has the potential to be the next Juan Gonzalez to this franchise but championships are so rare, especially with the type of payroll the Rangers tend to keep. I figure if I see one or two championships in my lifetime I'll be happy.

Hamels/Darvish/Sale puts them in a fantastic position for the next 2 years.

UPDATE: The Red Sox are "pushing hardest" to land Sale, per Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports. The Red Sox discussed Sale with the White Sox late Sunday evening, according to Bob Nightengale of USA TODAY. A potential Boston package is believed to lead with outfield prospect Andrew Benintendi and left-hander Eduardo Rodriguez, per Phil Rogers of MLB.com.

It remains unclear if the Chicago White Sox are serious about dealing Chris Sale, but the club reportedly has at least had discussions regarding the ace left-hander.

According to Jon Heyman of Today’s Knuckleball, the Rangers, Dodgers and Red Sox are three of the teams talking to the White Sox about Sale, “though at the moment it’s hard to tell if any of them has a great chance to land the five-time All-Star.”

Heyman notes those three teams have the depth in their farm system that could make a blockbuster deal happen. The White Sox are said to be asking for "five top players" in any deal for Sale.

ESPN’s Jayson Stark tweeted Sunday that Boston’s pursuit of Sale or another high-end starter "has struck out so far," adding the club is telling people they are "not optimistic" about making another big deal.

Joel Sherman of the New York Post reported last week that the Dodgers might be willing to offer a package including top pitching prospect Julio Urias if the White Sox were serious about dealing Sale.

With just hours to go before the deadline, the Rangers also have been mentioned as one of the leading candidates to land Milwaukee catcher Jonathan Lucroy. Heyman mentions infielder Joey Gallo as one of the prized prospects the White Sox might ask for Sale. Gallo also has been mentioned as a key chip in a possible deal with the Brewers for Lucroy.

Heyman also reports that the Rangers and White Sox haven't been in talks regarding Sale for "a while."

UPDATE -- Ken Rosenthal tweets that a deal between the Rangers and Yankees for Beltran is close, and Dillon Tate, last year's #4 overall pick, would be going to the Yankees in that deal. My guess is that there would be other pieces -- I know that Tate's stock has dropped, but I have a hard time thinking the Rangers would move him this quickly for two months of Beltran.

UPDATE II -- Jeff Passan tweets that the Rangers have agreed to a Beltran deal, and Tate, plus others, are going to the Yankees in this trade.

UPDATE III -- Still unclear on the rest of the package, though Jon Heyman says it is Tate plus two others.

UPDATE -- Ken Rosenthal tweets that a deal between the Rangers and Yankees for Beltran is close, and Dillon Tate, last year's #4 overall pick, would be going to the Yankees in that deal. My guess is that there would be other pieces -- I know that Tate's stock has dropped, but I have a hard time thinking the Rangers would move him this quickly for two months of Beltran.

UPDATE II -- Jeff Passan tweets that the Rangers have agreed to a Beltran deal, and Tate, plus others, are going to the Yankees in this trade.

UPDATE III -- Still unclear on the rest of the package, though Jon Heyman says it is Tate plus two others.

My understanding of Tate is that his struggles this year could have been due to pitching with a hamstring injury.

My understanding of Tate is that his struggles this year could have been due to pitching with a hamstring injury.

Some around Dallas are suggesting this might have been a cut bait move by the Rangers.

I recall hearing about the hamstring injury as well and I knew that he had went down to A ball to get his stuff together but other than that I didn't hear much about him. There are Ranger insiders saying they don't project him to be more of than a middle relief guy.

But the guy was the first pitcher taken in 2015 and was still a top 5 guy for the Rangers. The potential seems to be there. I really don't know what to expect with him. One would assume the other contenders were putting in bids for Beltran so maybe the Yankee scouts seen enough in him to pull the trigger?

Some around Dallas are suggesting this might have been a cut bait move by the Rangers.

I recall hearing about the hamstring injury as well and I knew that he had went down to A ball to get his stuff together but other than that I didn't hear much about him. There are Ranger insiders saying they don't project him to be more of than a middle relief guy.

But the guy was the first pitcher taken in 2015 and was still a top 5 guy for the Rangers. The potential seems to be there. I really don't know what to expect with him. One would assume the other contenders were putting in bids for Beltran so maybe the Yankee scouts seen enough in him to pull the trigger?

Some Yankee fans don't like this deal, but I'm not one of them. They had Gallo/Profar pipe dreams by adding in Pineda, etc which I constantly had to remind them was lunacy, even in this market (although I admit I'd considered it at one point).

This was likely the best offer they had, so it's a lottery pick - high upside if he finds it.

Some Yankee fans don't like this deal, but I'm not one of them. They had Gallo/Profar pipe dreams by adding in Pineda, etc which I constantly had to remind them was lunacy, even in this market (although I admit I'd considered it at one point).

This was likely the best offer they had, so it's a lottery pick - high upside if he finds it.

ARLINGTON -- The Rangers are heading into September with an 8 1/2-game lead in the American League West while the Mariners continue to fade from view in the postseason picture.

The Rangers hit five home runs, including a grand slam by Carlos Gomez and two by Rougned Odor, and Martin Perez pitched six scoreless innings in an 14-1 victory over the Mariners on Wednesday afternoon. The victory gives Texas a three-game sweep of their series and a fifth straight win, while the Mariners have lost five in a row. They are 11 1/2 games behind the Rangers in the West and 4 games out in the Wild Card race.

The 8 1/2-game lead over the Astros is tied for the Rangers' largest going into September. They also had that big of a lead going into September 2010. The Astros arrive in Arlington for a three-game series starting on Friday night.

"So far it has been good, but we have one more series this weekend," third baseman Adrian Beltre said. "We need to win that series and continue to create some separation so we can rest some guys."Perez beat Mariners ace Felix Hernandez, who was knocked out after allowing six runs in four innings. The big blow was Gomez's third career grand slam in a five-run fourth inning. Hernandez is now 17-23 with a 3.85 ERA in 49 career starts against the Rangers, the most losses by any opponent in club history.

Complete Disregard for Sabermetrics?? The Texas Rangers Are Making (Unsustainable) History In One-Run Games

The 2016 Texas Rangers are making history. Their 30-8 record in one-run games gives them a .789 winning percentage that, if it holds up, would set a record for the best winning percentage in one-run games since 1901. But the Rangers have a not-so-slight problem that could haunt them in the playoffs: performance in one-run games is almost entirely — though not exclusively — a matter of good timing and luck, not skill.

By all accounts, the Rangers are a decent team. Their run differential is +9, and sophisticated projection models such as FanGraphs’ (which looks at talent alone, not their record so far) would call for them to win 84 games over the course of a full season. Their excellent record in one-run games has helped put them over the top, though. They’ll probably finish with more than 90 wins and the AL West crown, despite the rival Houston Astros posting a much better run differential.

Performance in one-run games is notoriously variable. But one argument for the Rangers’ ability to sustain their record-setting mark might be a lights-out bullpen. Closer Sam Dyson has 30 saves, so perhaps the Rangers’ relief corps has earned more of those one-run wins than most teams with a similar record would deserve.

To test this theory, I looked at the relationship between a team’s bullpen performance and its record in one-run games, going back to 1988.1 I summed up FanGraphs’ wins above replacement for each team’s bullpen, and then plotted it against the team’s winning percentage in one-run contests.2Arthur-OneRunGames-1The chart above contains two extreme outliers: the 2016 Texas Rangers and the 2012 Baltimore Orioles, the only two teams in recent history with a better than .750 winning percentage in one-run games. In isolation, both performances were extremely unlikely to happen by chance (less than 1-in-10,000 odds), though given the huge sample of seasons we have so far — 2,452 team-seasons in MLB’s history — you’d expect such a thing to happen eventually.

One-run performance is messy, but it isn’t all luck. The correlation between a team’s bullpen strength and its one-run winning percentage is significant but fairly weak, highlighting the role of randomness in these situations.3 Just as any given plate appearance can produce almost any imaginable outcome, a game that hinges on only a single run is mostly up to chance.

That said, a good bullpen elevates the probability of holding a one-run lead. Add up that edge over the course of a season, and each win above replacement from the bullpen is worth about one extra point to a team’s winning percentage in one-run games. A five-win bullpen upgrade, which could take a team from roughly the bottom 10 percent of MLB bullpens to the top 10 percent, would net an extra five points of winning percentage. Over an average number of one-run games (46 per season), that’s equivalent to 2.3 more wins. If you total up that improved bullpen’s contribution in one-run games and their estimated contribution over the rest of the season (3.6 wins4), that five additional bullpen WAR ends up buying you about 5.9 wins in on-field results.5 This fact may help to explain why relievers seem to be overvalued by front offices relative to the sabermetric consensus.

But all of this assumes a top-notch bullpen anyway. And, surprisingly, the Rangers’ bullpen hasn’t been exceptional — or even good — this year. Although the 2012 Orioles’ relievers produced more than six wins of value, the Rangers’ pen has a paltry 1.1 WAR between them. Based on that alone, we’d expect their record in one-run games to fall below .500.

Anchored by closer Sam Dyson and Matt Bush, the top of the Rangers’ bullpen has been fine. But that duo has been dragged down by poor outings from other relievers such as Tom Wilhelmsen and Cesar Ramos.

Of course, Wilhelmsen and Ramos are typically used in low-leverage situations, only appearing in one-run games as a last resort. So I also looked to see whether I could explain one-run performance better by focusing on the top relievers in a given bullpen. But counting only the top three or top five relievers didn’t improve the model after controlling for the total WAR of the bullpen. Neither did looking at exceptionally unbalanced bullpens, i.e. those whose top relievers produced much more WAR than their teammates. That doesn’t necessarily rule out the possibility that WAR fails to account for something special that the Rangers’ bullpen might be doing to win one-run games, but league-wide data doesn’t provide much support for that notion.

If the Rangers can’t attribute their one-run success to the greatness of their bullpen, to what do they owe it? The answer is timing. The Rangers have played much better when the game is on the line, as measured by FanGraphs’ Clutch score. Their bullpen ranks eighth in the league in Clutch score, but even more impressively, their offense ranks first.6 Combine these two performances and you have a team that saves and scores runs better than any other when it counts.

But unfortunately for the Rangers, performance in the clutch is not a stable indicator of success. We need look no further than the 2016 Phillies for proof: Philly dominated the league in one-run games for the first two months of the year, rolling out to a 14-3 record in those contests through May 20th, which would have shattered the all-time mark if it had continued. It didn’t. By the end of the first half, the Phillies’ one-run record was down to 20-9 (which still would have been put them in the top 25 all-time); now they’re at a pedestrian 25-17 for the year, which drops them below the 200th position on the all-time list.

The lesson here is that a team’s record in one-run games tends to regress to the mean. The Rangers are more than 90 percent likely to make the playoffs, but they won’t be able to count on this kind of luck in tight contests when they get there.

OAKLAND, CALIF. Adrian Beltre hit a two-run homer in a three-run seventh Friday to help the Texas Rangers clinched the American League West with the a 3-0 victory over the Oakland Athletics.

Cole Hamels (15-5) was the winning pitcher in the clincher for a second straight year. He scattered six hits in seven scoreless innings, striking seven and walking two.

Kendall Graveman retired the first 18 Rangers batters before Carlos Gomez opened the seventh with an infield single. Ian Desmond followed with a single, sending Gomez to third, and Carlos Beltran’s high chopper allowed Gomez to score the game’s first run.

Beltre hit the next pitch over the left-field wall. The blast was his 31st of the season and gave him 100 RBIs.

Hitting: The closest the Rangers came to a hit over the first six innings was a lineout to first base by Jonathan Lucroy as Kendall Graveman took a perfect game into the seventh. He didn’t leave the inning with so much as a shutout. ... Carlos Gomez started the seventh with an infield single, and he went to third as Ian Desmond followed with a single to right field. ... Gomez scored from third on a high chopper to first base by Carlos Beltran. ... Adrian Beltre was next, and he launched a two-run homer to left field. It was his 31st homer of the season, and it gave him 100 RBIs.

Pitching: Cole Hamels worked seven scoreless innings, but he got some help in the second inning. ... Chad Pinder doubled to right-center field with two outs, and Renato Nunez tried to score from first. Nomar Mazara and Rougned Odor, though, executed a perfect relay home to nail Nunez and keep the game scoreless. ... Hamels allowed only four base runners over his final five innings. Twice the A’s had a runner reach second base with one out, but each time Hamels worked free. ... Matt Bush tossed a perfect eighth inning, and Sam Dyson nailed down the final three outs in the ninth.

AL playoff seedings totally up for grabs ...Going into play on Saturday, Texas just a half game up on Cleveland and just one up on Boston ...I guess i'm rooting for the Indians to be seed #1 and thus Toronto's potential Division Series opponent IF the Jays can hold on to a Wild Card and win the WC game.